


How to Go Home Again

by Gwyn_Paige



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23323825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gwyn_Paige/pseuds/Gwyn_Paige
Summary: After returning from Korea, Radar goes home to his Ma.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 33





	How to Go Home Again

**Author's Note:**

> I just really wanted a scene after "Goodbye, Radar" where we actually see him see his mom again. So I wrote this and accidentally made myself sad.

The journey home plays in his head like a movie. An adventure movie, the globe-trotting kind that they only got back at camp when they had really good quality bedsheets to trade. The hero would kiss his love interest good-bye and he’d board a plane bound for Paris or Egypt or someplace else equally exotic and with an equally flat-looking painted backdrop. And then the plane would fly across a map, drawing a dotted line that bounced across oceans and continents, finally landing neatly at their destination.

That’s what he pictures on the plane from Seoul to San Fran. He spends the whole flight just staring out the window, down at the green and brown (mostly brown) mass of Korea and then Japan as they slowly turn under him, and then at the great wide blue-as-anything Pacific Ocean that stretches all the way out to the horizon.

“Isn’t that something?” Radar says to the guy in the seat next to him, who’s between naps. “Gosh, isn’t that _something_. I’m from Iowa, ya know. My ma, she’s never even seen an ocean, I don’t think. _Damn_ , I wish I had a camera. Oh. Excuse me. It’s just that she’d never believe this ‘less she saw it with her own eyes. All that water. And me, all the way across it this whole time. I bet she’s gonna hug me like the Dickens when she sees me. If she’s missed me half as much as I missed her, she will.”

The other guy nods, barely. He understands. He’s going home, too. Everyone on the plane is. They’re all exhausted and thrilled and terrified that something will happen before they can get there.

It could happen. It does. Radar knows that now.

He turns back to the window. He imagines that dotted line, bright red, following in their wake. “Be home soon, Ma,” he says quietly, as if he’s dropping the words like pennies into the ocean.

* * *

The red dotted line follows him all the way to the San Francisco Airport, where he meets up with BJ’s wife, Peg, and Erin, his little girl. He’s never met BJ’s folks before, except in letters and over the phone, which in Radar’s opinion don’t really count. As a phone operator, he ought to know: you don’t really ever get to know a person till you can stare them in the face and shake their hand.

It turns out that Peg and Erin are the nicest way to re-introduce yourself to the United States. They go to a diner for lunch, and it’s the best meal Radar’s had in two years. For the obvious reasons, of course, but also because it feels right. The air in the restaurant, the sound of the other diners, the texture of the tablecloth, the feeling of the metal fork in his hand. They feel familiar, like an old baseball glove that still fits. The food could be the same old slop they served in the mess tent. It wouldn’t matter. It would still be one of the best meals of his life.

They talk about BJ and Hawkeye and Colonel Potter and the whole rest of the unit and anything but the war, and Erin tries French fries for the first time and decides she loves them.

“So, Radar,” Peg says when they’re halfway through their milkshakes, “what’re you gonna do first, when you get back to Ottumwa?”

“Oh, gee. You know, I hadn’t really thought about it.” He hadn’t. He’d been too busy worrying about the present to think about the future. “I guess first things first, I give my ma a big ol’ hug. I’ve been missing her something fierce. And she’s been all alone in that house since my Uncle Ed died. I mean, the animals keep her company. But they don’t give great hugs.”

Peg smiles at him. Radar can see why BJ likes her so much. Something about her sort of glows, like all the light in the room is just for her. “That’s very sweet, Radar.”

“Yeah.” Radar takes a sip of his milkshake. “After that I think I’ll go see the animals. They’re as much a part of the family as my family is.” He knows Peg will ask, so he ticks them off on his fingers, one by one. “First, the cow. Her name’s Bessie. She just had a calf last year, so I gotta go congratulate her. Then I gotta say hi to the dogs, Rufus and Fido. Then there’s the chickens. They don’t have names, on account of us eating them sometimes. They still get a hello, though. And I’m gonna save the cats for last. There’s sixteen of them. Well, there was when I left anyway. Their names are Snowball, Ginger, Shadow, Shadow Junior, Fluffy, Puffy, Fuzzy, Stinky, Dandelion, Clover, Spot, Mousey—she’s the best mice catcher—Cinnamon, Doris, Sandy, and Corncob.”

“My, that’s a whole lot of animals,” says Peg.

“I wanna pet ‘em! I wanna pet the cats!” says Erin, through a mouthful of fries. “Can I, mom, can I?”

Peg and Radar laugh. “Sure,” says Radar. “Sure, you can. You come visit, Erin, and I’ll introduce you an’ your mom to all the cats.”

“That’s a swell idea," Peg says to him. “Maybe we could visit around Christmastime. If BJ isn’t . . . back.”

They share a look for a long moment. The peace talks are still going on, Radar wants to say. They’re expecting everyone to be home by Christmas.

But that’s what they said last year. And the year before that.

“Sure,” Radar says instead. “Christmastime. Just honk the horn when you get there.”

Later that evening, jet-lagged and with a belly full of hamburgers and soda, Radar boards another plane.

* * *

The dotted line follows him to the Eastern Iowa Airport. From there, a bus drives him to the nearby, slightly-larger town of Fairfield.

He gets a taxi the rest of the way to Ottumwa. He feels the dotted line getting closer and closer to his destination. He feels his army-issue duffle bag sitting on his knees, and his civilian-issue suitcase sitting on the seat next to him. He feels the potholes in the road get worse as they get further into farm country. He feels his heart beating in his chest, in a strange kind of rhythm: _Go-ing home. Go-ing home. Go-ing home._ He feels the bittersweetness of the thought. He feels tears press against the corners of his eyes.

The taxi stops at the side of the dusty road. He pays the driver and tips him, in regular, civilian, American dollars.

He gets out of the taxi with his duffel and his suitcase. He’s standing at the end of the long driveway that leads up to the farmhouse. White-washed, wooden, broad, practical. Lace curtains in the window. Flowerpots on the front porch.

The morning is cloudless and already warm. A soft summer breeze ruffles the long grass of the yard and the fields beyond the house. There’s the faint smell of manure, and buckwheat, and clean, healthy soil. Somewhere, a wind chime dances.

It’s the same. It’s the same.

Far away at the end of the driveway, the front door opens. It creaks, like it always has.

“Ma,” says Walter.

“Walter!” A skirt is hitched to the side, strong legs stomp down rickety wooden stairs. Arms are thrown out in welcome. “Walter, my baby, come here!”

_“Ma!”_

He’s running. He’s dropped the duffel and the suitcase and he’s running. His hat’s flown off and he’s running. Driveway gravel under him, blue Iowan sky above him, red dotted line behind him, almost there, almost there, he’s running.

He arrives.

“My baby,” says his ma, her arms around him. “My Walter. You’re home.”

He hugs her back. He tries to tell her with his arms what he can’t say with his mouth, because he can’t think of any words right now. He buries his face in her shoulder, and it’ll probably stain her apron, but that’s alright. She’s staining his jacket right now, too.

He doesn’t understand how he’s managed the past two years. What he’s been doing, without those arms to fall into. His ma’s hug is better than any blanket, any space heater, any pat on the shoulder from any captain or colonel. Two years’ worth of rations couldn’t add up to how full he feels right now.

His ma puts her hand on the back of his head, and runs it through his hair. Her hand is shaking.

For some reason, that gets to him. He is suddenly angry, iron-hot-in-his-belly furious, at the whole stupid, damn, blankity-blank war. Two years. His ma was waiting for letters, phone calls, not sure hour-by-hour if he was dead or alive, for two _years_. He missed two birthdays. He missed Uncle Ed’s death. And _he_ got to go home. Nobody else did. Not Hawkeye, not BJ, not Major Houlihan. Not Colonel Henry Blake.

It’s not fair. It’s so unbelievably, blatantly unfair.

And who’s gonna replace him? He hadn’t even thought about it till now. Which brand-new recruit was gonna be shipped out to be the new clerk? What new kid was gonna get ripped from _his_ mother’s house at eighteen? He could’ve been heading out from San Fran just as his plane was landing. Or did he pass him in the air, one plane heading east, the other heading west?

Hawkeye had been right. It’s all just a machine. You patch kids up to send them back out so they can try to die again. If you send them home, a new kid takes their place.

It’s endless. And for what? And for _what_?

He cries harder into his ma’s shoulder. His tears are hot and angry and despairing all at once. He grips her starched dress, white with little patterns of red cherries, because he needs to hold onto something, something real that isn’t death or war. Something that makes sense. Something that feels right.

He remembers hiding behind that same starched dress as a kid, afraid of all the farm animals that were so much bigger than him. Until, at around four or five, he was allowed to pet the cow for the first time. After that, you couldn’t keep him away.

He remembers sitting in his ma’s lap, playing with the fringes of the dress, as she told him bedtime stories. His ma had never been to school and never really learned to read or write correctly, but she’d seen and heard plenty of things, and she knew how to spin a good yarn.

He remembers the day he left, nearly two years ago, wearing the same clothes he’s wearing now and carrying the same two bags. His ma had been wearing a different dress, but he remembers that the laundered, starched smell and feeling of it, as he hugged her goodbye, was exactly the same.

In the present, voice muffled and wet, he says, “Don’t cry, Ma. I’m home. I’m alright. Don’t cry.”

He feels his ma shake her head against his own. “What kind of ma would I be if I didn’t cry when my baby came home?”

He’s not sure who’s comforting who. They’re both holding onto each other. They’re both lost in the ocean of the last two years.

In a few minutes, they’ll part and retrieve Walter’s bags. He’ll walk up to the house, where a dog will be barking in the window and the cats who live under the porch will come out and greet him. He’ll take his things to his old room, where there’ll be washed, pressed sheets on the bed. He’ll take off his uniform and change into a pair of rubber boots and overalls, and he’ll go out back to say hello to the cow and her new calf, and the goats and the horses, and the cats who live in the barn. He’ll go about the day under the neat, warm Iowan sun, feeling the blood in his fingers. He and his ma will share cherry pie as the sun goes down. Dinner will be chicken with gravy and baked potatoes, eaten outside on the porch, after dessert.

It’ll be the same, in some ways, as it was before. In a lot of ways, even. But not all.

He’ll have dreams about planes, flying west, from San Fran and New York and Boston and Crabapple Cove and Toledo and Iowa. Planes filled with people, who don’t yet know how loud a bomb is when it lands a hundred yards from you. Who will have to learn the sound a ribcage makes when it’s cracked open.

He will dream about their faces. He will wonder how many of them will be going home on those same planes, heading in the opposite direction. He’ll never dream about the journey back.

For now, he’s in his ma’s arms. For now, they both cry two years’ worth of tears. For now, he’s Walter O’Reilly.

He is twenty years old.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
